This blog is my attempt to put words to the many things I believe. I have titled this blog with the question, "Can I be a Christian?" because I have, for most of my life, taken criticism from various Christians just for hinting at the things I believe.


Now is my chance to come out of the closet of faith I have lived in for much of my life. I am excited to attempt to articulate my beliefs in hopes of better understanding them, and possibly better understanding my place in the Christian communities in which I actively participate.


The following blog posts represent my beliefs:

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Truth


In a conversation with a fundamentalist Christian, I reminded him that the Bible says, in 1 John 4:1, "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world."

In response to this, he said, "Of course we need to do that to everyone else's claims. But, it is heresy to suggest that we apply that same criticism to the Bible."

I have heard Christians claim that it is their god-given duty to protect the Truth.

In a forum, I met a man who believed it was his duty, in spite of his own desires, to sit in that forum all day of everyday and argue with people, insisting on the truth, and pointing out where others got it wrong.

I have been exposed to the attitude that Christians can see the truth that the rest of the world is too distracted, or too sinful, or just too unwilling to see.

This has left me asking: What is truth?

The question is not about what is true. It is not about the subject of truth. It is a question about the nature of truth itself.

Is truth a rare gem that must be hidden or protected? Is it something sacred that can be damaged or desecrated? Is it something that can somehow go unexperienced? Is it a possession of any one person or group of people?

In church as a teenager, I was taught to look critically at the beliefs of other religious groups and at the claims of the sciences. The holes in their claims and practices were pointed out to me. I learned that other people have a profound capacity to be bamboozled by attractive ideas.

In this way, I learned how to critically and objectively observe the truth.

I learned that truth was something we could see when we honestly and critically looked at the evidence available to us. I could pick out the truth if I was willing to dissect and test the ideas of a group, not as an insistent proponent of those ideas, but as a ruthless skeptic and critic of them.

Truth, I learned, is the evidence left when I have stripped away the biases, expectations and beliefs I carried with me.

Then, after learning that lesson well, I turned around. I applied the same scrutiny to my own religion. I looked at Christianity with the same skeptical lens I had learned to use on other people's beliefs.

I absolutely appreciate that observation can be wrong. I believe there are optical illusions that can easily deceive us. That is precisely why determined criticism and skepticism are important in discovering truth. More often than not, our own beliefs and expectations create the blind spots in our observations.

I continue to wonder what truth is, and how best to observe it. It is a wonder that keeps me looking.

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